Roundup serves more than 100 arrest warrants

“We knew we had to go in heavy,” Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit Commander Randall Johnson said. The house, in the 1500 block of Terrace Drive was known to bea "trap house" where drugs are dropped, operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We had to put a chain on the steel door and rip it out,” he said. The door was boarded on the inside and officers had to break through it. They went in with plenty of personnel, and the armored vehicle.

They found one gun at the residence, paraphernalia, marijuana, crack and suboxone, Johnson said. Officers arrested four people in the house and two who were outside in a car.

“They were customers,” Johnson said, because the trade was already underway at 6 a.m., when officers started rounding up people with existing warrants. Most of the warrants were obtained in the last three months, Chief Deputy Michael Barton said, with a few older outstanding warrants.

As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, 74 people had been taken into custody, and about 100 warrants had been served, Sheriff Todd Entrekin said. Officers set out with 248 warrants on 145 people, he said, and officers remained in the field as a press conference was held to update media on the effort.

“That’s a lot of folks,” Entrekin said, most on felony drug charges. “It’s unreal the number of folks still selling drugs, when they know this day is coming.” The department and surrounding police departments and agencies periodically do this kind of operation, setting out to serve accumulating warrants.

“These folks have got to be sent off,” he said. “They (have) got to be held accountable.”

Both Entrekin and Gadsden Police Capt. Wayne Keener noted the violence in Gadsden in recent weeks. Both said drugs likely played a role in some of those incidents.

Officers exhibited some of the guns and drugs seized, not only during the roundup but in two major heroin cases last week.

Among the items seized was a money counter — one of those devices you seen in movies about drug dealers, that counts bills automatically and flips them into neat stacks.

"We found that money counter on a kitchen table," Deputy DEU Commander Phil Sims said. "I don't have one of those in my kitchen."

They did not find a lot of money at that location, Sims said, but they found wrappers and bands that are used to bind the stacks of cash.

The raid may have come at a time between purchases, when money had been counted, stacked, rubber-banded and sent to buy more drugs.

Sims and Johnson said they believe some of the drugs they seized in the roundup and in recent arrests were delivered through postal or delivery services. “They will have packages delivered to a residence where no one has to sign for it,” Sims said, such as an empty residence.

“They’ll stake it out until the package is delivered,” he said.

It’s hard to watch for such deliveries, Johnson said.

There were guns — including a pistol similar to the firepower the military uses, and full magazines loaded with green-tipped armor-piercing ammunition.

Asked why people want that kind of weaponry and ammo, Keener said it’s to deal with first-responders, and with others in the drug trade, and people can obtain it easily.

Heavy firepower guns and body armor can be obtained at gun shows, Keener said, and in the often violent drug trade, people think they need both to protect themselves against other criminals and the police wearing body armor.

Some of the weaponry seen Wednesday, he said, could penetrate body armor.

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